5 Insider Tips To Make Accessibility Part Of Workflow
Minnesota’s Workforce One Team Shares Their Accessibility Plan
By:
- JoAnn Rautio, Minnesota IT Services partnering with the Department of Employment and Economic Development, and
- Jennie Delisi, Office of Accessibility
You may have said to yourself: accessibility testing should be part of a technology project’s workflow. The questions your colleagues may ask next are “who will do that?” and, “how does that work in real life?” The answers to both questions are:
- It takes a team of people, working together.
- It takes time to mature the process, catch all aspects of each type of workflow.
- And, it is an ever-evolving process.
According to DEED, “Nearly 2,000 state, city, county, and non-profit employment and training providers use Workforce One (WF1) to track employment and training services to more than 100,000 customers across Minnesota's One Stop network.” WF1 is a web-based client management application. It “was created through a partnership between the Department of Human Services (DHS) and the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED)."
This month we learn from the team of state employees who work on and support the Workforce One project. Some work for Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) – the state of Minnesota’s IT department. Others work for the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). Team members share their tips for making accessibility part of workflow, including:
- Their Chief Business Technology Officer.
- The product owner.
- The business analyst.
- The Project Management Office Supervisor.
Read their accessibility tips in 5 Insider Tips To Make Accessibility Part Of Workflow.
Improve Accessibility of Your Teams Meetings
- Questions and Answers (Part 1)
By: Jennie Delisi, Office of Accessibility
Ever want the inside scoop on Microsoft Teams accessibility? On October 12, 2022 Microsoft gave a training for state of Minnesota employees. They had the opportunity to learn the latest of what is available in the version of Teams they use – part of the Government Community Cloud (GCC). We collected the questions they asked, the answers we got, and we are sharing them with you!
Many thanks to the subject matter experts that contributed to these responses, including:
- Macauley Kloetzly, Microsoft.
- Kris Schulze, Experience IT Manager.
- Jay Wyant, Chief Information Accessibility Officer.
Learn:
- Where to find Microsoft Teams accessibility tips.
- How to make your cursor easier for participants to see.
- How to read PowerPoint Live content with a screen reader.
- Why the transcript may seem to stop.
Tons of accessibility tips in Improve Accessibility of Your Teams Meetings.
Research Documents Survey by the COGA Task Force
Do you find the research done by the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility (COGA) Task Force useful? Help them make it better.
Take a survey about the W3C's research documents on accessibility for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities. Through the survey they would like to understand how people are using the current content, and what the Task Force needs to update. This will help them make the next version more useful. The survey closes November 30, 2022.
For maximum reach, help them by sharing the survey widely. This will help them make the next versions even better!
This survey is anonymous unless you choose to give them your contact information for more conversations. Have questions? Send the COGA Task Force an email about the Research Documents survey.
Thank You, Subscribers! You Make a Difference!
Did you know that you have been key to making this such a successful newsletter? Thank you!
In the last 12 months, your support has helped:
- Share information about accessibility. You shared the newsletters over 2,300 times!
- Readers open our newsletters over 37,500 times.
- Increase our number of subscribers 24%.
- Reach people who are:
- state of Minnesota employees.
- people who live in Minnesota and are interested in digital accessibility. This includes employees of cities and counties.
- employees of other states, the federal government, colleges and universities.
- interested in digital accessibility and live in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
(Data from November 3, 2021 to November 3, 2022)
Education and awareness are key steps towards creating more accessible digital spaces. We appreciate all you do to educate yourself and others about the need for accessibility.
We also want to take a moment to thank the behind-the-scenes newsletter support team from the Minnesota IT Services' communications team. Suzanne, Jeremy, Kendall, and Laura - thank you for all you do!
Wishing you and your loved ones a happy, healthy, and peaceful holiday season.
- Office of Accessibility staff (Jay and Jennie)
Tech Tip: New PDF Accessibility Training!
Are you new to making PDFs accessible? Or, do you need something to help remember steps for a part of the process?
Good news! The state of Minnesota just released their PDF Accessibility Training!
In this free e-Learning you will find short modules. Each focuses on a single topic. For example, you can learn how to:
- “Walk the tag tree” – check the tag order and type of tag.
- Create or adjust lists.
- Work with tables.
- Use the accessibility checker and understand the results.
Each module contains a video and video transcript.
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